


Draco's Plan

by loverloverlover



Series: Planning-Verse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Daily Prophet, Gen, alcohol use, charity work, draco buys a ... farm, drarry if you squint, maudlin drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28925139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loverloverlover/pseuds/loverloverlover
Summary: The war is over, and Draco Malfoy is constantly finding himself a person of interest in the Daily Prophet- for reasons that he hates. Pansy comes up with a plan to change the public's opinion of him, so Draco finds himself involved in charity work.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy & Pansy Parkinson
Series: Planning-Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2207532
Kudos: 6





	Draco's Plan

**Author's Note:**

> written for the international wizarding school championship, round one, over on ffn.net!
> 
> Beauxbatons - Finding your Heart's Desire
> 
> Special Rule: Create an Object of Worship
> 
> Prompts: 8. [genre] humor _&_ 13: [setting] a farm _&_ 3\. [dialogue] How do you expect me to find a dragon hidden by a Disillusionment Charm?

Draco Malfoy was buried under a mountain of blankets and surrounded by a hoard of pillows, and everything would be absolutely perfect if it weren’t for the loud, incessant beeping noise emanating from across the room. As he groaned and pulled his pillow over his head, Draco decided he’d give his left nut to _never_ hear the noise again. He had the overwhelming desire to throw a tantrum like a two-year-old, fists and feet banging into the ground and everything.

It had been a deliberate move to place both his wand and his alarm clock on the dresser across the room—because this was not a day that he could laze around in bed—but he hated his last-night-self a whole hell of a lot at the moment.

Draco forced himself to his feet in one fluid motion, and though the room went a little dark and fuzzy for a moment, he staggered to the dresser and silenced the alarm. It had been after midnight when he’d returned to his apartment last night, and dawn was still an hour off, so he was bleary eyed and exhausted.

His usual morning shower woke him up enough to eat his breakfast without feeling nauseous at the prospect, and soon enough, he was dressed in his travelling robes and sturdy boots. He sat at his dining room table and waited for the roar of the Floo to alert him to Pansy’s arrival. While he waited, he pulled out his brown, pocket-sized, Moleskine notebook and unwound the pencil and binding.

It had been ages since there were any blank pages in his notebook, but even at Pansy’s insistence that he just buy a new one—“Really, Draco, they’re less than a Galleon at Flourish and Blotts.” —he’d refused to give this one up. It was battered and messy and scratched, but it was full of his ideas, and if he didn’t carry the notebook around with him, how would he _remember_ all those ideas? More importantly, how would any of the ideas make it off the page? He reread his entries in the journal so often that the binding has had to be reinforced a dozen times. Pansy thought it was all hilarious, and she teased him mercilessly about his obsession with the thing.

So these days, he just wrote in the margins and in any blank space he could find. On the bottom of a page with a roughly drawn blueprint of a barn, Draco scribbled, _Shelter in Wales was a no go. No matter how charitable I want to be, or how much I usually enjoy it, I was_ not _meant to serve food._

Most of the other pages in the notebook carried the same tune, though writing some entries had truly surprised him. When he’d first started his work in charity a year ago, he hadn’t expected to enjoy it—he’d actually expected to hate it _at least_ half-as-much as he’d hated the Dark Lord. Draco had just been striving to move away from the mistakes he’d made as a child, and he was tired of seeing his name in the press for all the wrong reasons. He yearned for something different.

Back when he’d been living at Malfoy Manor, it had been Pansy’s idea for him to get into charity work, and it was only at her insistence that he had picked up the notebook in the first place. Or more accurately, why he’d _caught_ the notebook.

_Draco was moping. Though he’d deny it till his dying breath that that was what he was doing, he was_ definitely _moping. He was lounging in his desk chair—which truly wasn’t meant for any form of lounging, judging by the crick developing in his neck—and he held a lukewarm cup of tea in his hand. As he swirled the tea and the liquid threatened to spill over the lip, Draco wished desperately that it was Firewhiskey instead. Oh, how he’d_ kill _for a glass of Firewhiskey._

_A copy of the_ Daily Prophet _lay discarded on the desk in front of him, and Draco stared at the picture that graced the front page. It was a photo of him, because of course, it was—_ why wouldn’t it be, _he thought hollowly. It was the one year anniversary of his trial date, and nothing ever happened in the world anymore that was interesting enough to take his place._

_They used the same photo of him they always did, and it_ definitely _wasn’t his best look. First, the angle was_ all _wrong—taken from the bottom and to the left—but that wasn’t even the worst part. Draco’s eyes were dark and tired, and his cheeks were sallow and ill-looking. He was wearing severe black robes with a high collar, and his hair was so slicked back that he looked bald with every flash of a camera. His facial expressions didn’t change once, and if it weren’t for the movement of the people behind him or the flashes of light, he’d have thought it was one of those strange, non-moving photographs._

_Truth be told, he looked dead and dressed for his funeral._

_The vultures at the_ Prophet _used the same photo every time it was his turn in the press—whether the occasion was as severe as his trial date or a mere sighting in Diagon Alley. The photo supported their narrative of him being a no-good, low-life, has-been baby Death Eater._

_Draco thought it was a sign of lazy reporting._

_The faint click-clacking sound of heels echoed from the hallway outside the study, and Draco sighed deeply, bracing himself for the onslaught that was Pansy Parkinson._

_The heels came closer and closer, until there she was, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Her hair was longer now than it had been in school, and it fell in waves over her shoulders. She was, of course, wearing her signature red heels, and she’d paired them with a black blouse and a too-short-for-winter skirt. Though she rarely ever left his manor, she was always dressed to the nines whenever she emerged from her room in the East Wing._

_After his initial glance in her direction, he went back to staring at his photo._

_“‘Yes, hello, Pansy! How wonderful to see you—you look_. lovely _this evening. Would you care to join me for a drink?’” She gasped and placed a hand on her chest. “So kind of you to offer, Draco! I’d_ love _one.”_

_She click-clacked across the room and rounded his desk to sit in front of him. She crossed her legs, exposing more of her thigh than he ever cared to see, and plucked the cup from his hand. She took a sip, only to cough and make a disgusted face._

_“This is_ just _tea,” she stated._

_“Yes, I often drink tea.”_

_“You’re a delight tonight, aren't you, darling?” she teased as she hopped off the desk and crossed the room to his liquor cabinet. She poured two tumblers of Firewhiskey before marching back over to him. She wrenched the mug out of his hand again and threw it into the hallway—it shattered against the stone wall—and he closed his eyes, praying for patience._

_“If you’re going to be maudlin, at least be drunk while you do it,” she instructed, reaching across the desk to hand him one of the glasses._

_“Yes, dear,” he mocked._

_“So… why are we drinking tonight?” she asked._

_“Because you poured me a drink.”_

_She glared at him, and he glared right back, but she was beyond used to his moods. He gestured to the_ Daily Prophet, _and as she moved back to her seated position on the desk in front of him, she picked it up._

_“Ah, so you’re in the paper again.”_

_“Yes, they_ love _me,” he drawled. He took a sip of his drink, then took another one. “I’m expecting an invitation to dinner any day now.”_

_“Horribly unflattering photo, isn’t it?” she continued, ignoring him. “You should pay them to never put it in print again.”_

_He forced a laugh and took another drink, draining it this time._

_“That’s it,” Pansy murmured, dropping the_ Prophet _to her lap with a rustle of paper. “Just give them money!”_

_“How much did you have to drink before you came to bother me?” he asked, a furrow in his brow._

_“No, shut up! I’m_ brilliant!” _she yelled, smacking his chest with the back of her palm._

_“I doubt that,” he mumbled into his tumbler, wishing it would magically refill itself._

_“You have loads of money, and people_ love _people who have loads of money,” she said._

_“I don’t think that’s true...”_

_“You can just give them money! And you can give a lot of money to other places—charities and shit! Places that’ll put your name in a newsletter, so everyone can see how generous and rich you are.”_

_“You’re actually serious, aren’t you?” he asked._

_“Hell yeah, I am! Here” —she reached for a discarded journal that he’d deemed too small to be of any use and threw it at him— “write down some of those charities that our mothers used to donate to, and we can send them money tomorrow.”_

_Draco ignored her use of “we,” picking his battles and picking up the journal._

He was drawn out of his memory by the Floo roaring to life in his living room. He wrapped up his notebook—a notebook that had begun as a to-do list he was dreading but had, miraculously, evolved into plans that he cared about beyond measure—and stuck it in his pocket. He could hear Pansy’s heels on his hardwood, and she made her usual big snit of groaning about the state of her hair after her trip through the Floo.

“Draco, I’m here!” Pansy called.

“Oh, I know,” he replied as he walked to the living room. “You came in like a herd of hippogriffs like you always do.”

“Well, if you’d told me where we were going, I could’ve just met you there. You know I hate the Floo.”

“Do you know the meaning of the word ‘surprise’?” he asked. “Because it wouldn’t have been a surprise if I told you where to go.”

“Oh, shut up. Just give me your arm,” she huffed.

Draco let Pansy weave her arm through his, and Draco Apparated them from his apartment. They reappeared with a _CRACK_ in a field. The sun was midway in the sky now, and there was a warm glow to everything. Across the field, there was a modest farmhouse adjacent to a large red barn. A fenced-in portion of land was attached to the barn where a few horses grazed, their tails flicking back and forth. The whole thing was picturesque, straight out of a mid-century landscape painting.

He had purposefully Apparated them far out from the buildings so that they could see it all at once. He wasn’t a weepy person—never had been, never would be—but he felt so much pride as he looked out over the field.

“Draco, _why_ are we here?” Pansy groaned. Her red heels were sinking into the mud, and her pinched and displeased expression made Draco choke back a laugh.

“I own this,” Draco informed her. “I bought it a month ago.”

“You what?”

“This is what I’m doing next. I’m starting my own nonprofit, and I’m starting it here.”

“Here? You bought… a farm?”

“Yes, for horses,” he said. “And, you know, goats and chickens and shit.”

“For... chickens and shit?” She laughed breathlessly and without humor.

“Yes,” he repeated. “For horses and goats and chickens and shit. I did some research, and I talked to a couple people in the wizarding charity industry, and we realized that there’s a big empty space in nonprofits for children—it’s a place where I could easily pick up the slack, so I did. Plus, animals are fantastic for children, and they’re even better for children who’ve been through a traumatic event. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

_“This_ is what you’ve been planning—what you’re always scribbling away about in that damn notebook you practically worship.”

“Yes,” he said tentatively. He was proud of what he’d done here, but he wanted Pansy to be happy for him too, and he couldn’t decipher her tone of voice. “Theo’s been getting everything ready for me. He’s surprisingly attached to the horses, and he threw a fit when I tried to tell him where to place the fence posts.”

“Draco…” Pansy trailed off.

“What, do you think it won’t work?”

“No, Draco, it’s not that… it’s… this is amazing.”

Draco leaned against the red barn and watched a group of children jump around and yell near Theo as he showed them all the parts of the saddle. It had been a month since they’d officially opened their doors, and they’d been flourishing. He pulled out his notebook—he’d solved the no-room-to-write problem by magically adding more pages, take _that_ Pansy—and flipped to a page he’d written in last night.

The entry said, _Riley pet a horse today! He still won’t ride, but it was the first time he’d let Theo lift him up to touch one. Good progress._

Draco had staff to keep track of expenditures, and even more staff to keep track of the animals and the farm, but Draco himself made it a priority to keep track of the children—keep track of their progress and what he could improve to help them more.

“Mr. Draco?” There was a gentle but insistent tug on his shirt, and Draco looked down. “Can you take me to the chickens again?”

“Of course, Riley,” Draco said. If someone had told his fifteen-year-old self that he’d be wearing Muggle clothes and happily taking the hand of a four-year-old to go chase chickens, he’d have laughed his ass off. Hell, he’d still have laughed about it a year ago.

But here he was, not laughing at all.

Draco and Riley crossed through the barn slowly—Draco keeping pace with Riley’s little strides—and Riley kept close to Draco’s leg when they passed stalls that still had horses in them. All the other children enjoyed the brushing and the riding of the horses more than any of the other aspects the farm offered, but not Riley. He thought they were big and scary, and so every day—even after he’d pet one yesterday—he’d pull Draco’s shirt and drag him off to see the chickens instead.

When they reached the chicken coop, Riley dropped Draco’s hand and ran off to the fence to gently settle his stuffed dragon on one of the fence posts. Riley carried that toy everywhere, and he always set it down on the same fence so it could “watch.” He was taking longer than usual to settle the thing this time, and Draco watched as Riley clenched his eyes shut and kept his hands on the toy. Draco was just about to ask him what was wrong when the toy disappeared. He blinked, confused, but Riley didn’t seem at all concerned.

_Children are weird,_ he thought.

He helped Riley get a handful of chicken feed from the bag, and the boy took off with a grin. The chickens clucked and followed him everywhere, and Riley kept that same big grin on his face the entire time. While Riley ran, Draco pulled his notebook back out and flipped to the last page that read, _Sylvie asked about a hay slide. Find out what a hay slide is._ And a little further down, he’d written, _Theo says we need more fence posts, but there’s nothing left to fence in. Maybe vanish some so he can re-do them?—Pansy supports this, says she’ll sacrifice her shoes and do it this weekend._

His head snapped up when he heard Riley yell. The boy was standing at the fence post swiping his little hands at the place where he’d set his dragon.

“Mr. Draco! Where’d he go?” he cried.

Draco squatted down so that he was level with Riley’s eyes and said, “You made him disappear, remember?”

“I-I put a dis-lusion charm on him so n-no one would take him. My mummy puts dis-lusion charms on her purse sometimes s-so bad guys won’t s-steal it,” Riley said, his voice wobbly.

“Is that right?”

“Yeah! Make him come back!” Riley demanded.

“Well, how do you expect me to find a dragon hidden by a Disillusionment Charm?” Draco asked, amused as he pulled out his wand.

“With magic, _duh.”_ Riley giggled, which had been the goal.

Draco waved his wand, and the dragon reappeared. It had fallen off the fence post and was lying face down on the dirt. Riley snatched it up, completely unconcerned about the smudges on the fabric, and ran back off towards the chickens. He was showing the dragon the chickens, something Draco had found ridiculous when Riley had first done it, but that now endeared him entirely.

He was smiling as he got to his feet, but it slid right off his face when he saw the man waiting outside the fence.

“Hey, Malfoy,” Harry Potter said with a sheepish wave. He looked apprehensive about being there, and by the way he looked over his shoulder a couple times, he was ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. He was wearing Muggle jeans and a plain blue t-shirt, and he had a toddler perched on his hip—a toddler with insane blue hair and horrid striped socks.

“Potter,” Draco greeted hesitantly. When the other man didn’t say anything, Draco stared at him and realized he was going to have to prompt him. “What are you…?”

“Right” —Potter turned red, and the toddler babbled— “I, er, read about this place in the _Daily Prophet,_ and I—”

“This was in the _Prophet?”_ Draco interrupted.

Potter looked surprised that he didn’t already know this, and that made two of them. Draco checked the _Daily Prophet_ every day— _except this morning, I was late,_ he thought.

“Er, yeah,” Potter said. “Here, I brought my copy with me. I was gonna finish reading through it while Teddy, uh, met the animals. Here—”

Potter walked up to him and handed him the Prophet. Draco snatched it from him more forcefully than he’d intended and opened it. There, on the front page, was a photo of a child on a horse, and standing next to the horse, was Draco. He wasn’t facing the camera, but he was smiling as he looked up at the child. As the photo looped, he led the horse in a circle before handing the reins off to Theo, who was half out of frame.

The headline read, _Malfoy Heir Does Good._

His notebook was burning a hole in his pocket when Draco looked up at Potter, flabbergasted. Without a care that this wasn’t his _Daily Prophet,_ Draco ripped the photo out, the headline still attached. He ignored Potter’s _“Oi!”_ of protest and just handed the ripped paper back to him. Draco pulled out his notebook and gently opened to the very front page, where he’d drunkenly written the names of a few charities and a few _more_ choice swear words.

Draco placed the photo on the page, smoothing it flat with a reverent hand. He put the notebook in his pocket with a smile. When he looked back up at Potter, the other man was smiling too.

“Well, come on, Potter,” Draco began, waving him towards the gate to the enclosure. “The chickens are this way.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, and please let me know what you thought!


End file.
